Visit the Avida-ED 3.0 BETA release access page, which has a link to the application served from our site, and also installer packages for both MacOS and Windows. The platform-specific installers set up a local web server on your machine and launch an instance of Avida-ED Web 3.0 in your default browser.

• June 9-11, 2016: The second national Avida-ED Active LENS Workshop for faculty was held at Lyman Briggs College and the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action here at MSU. [Photo: Wesley Elsberry]

• Jan. 19, 2016: We are now accepting applications for the second annual LEVERS Avida-ED Workshop for MSU biology faculty to be held at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI in June 9 -11, 2016. [Applications CLOSED March 2016].

• June 4-6, 2015: Active LENS Workshop. We held the first of our national Avida-ED faculty development workshops as part of our NSF Active LENS grant at Lyman Briggs College and the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action here at MSU. The grant funded 18 participants—mostly university and college biology faculty—in nine teams of two and BEACON funded an additional team of two High School teachers. Teams came from both public and private colleges, universities, community college, and high schools, with participants from California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Active Lens Workshop 2015 group photo

• June 1, 2015. Robert T. Pennock. “Teaching Evolution and Scientific Practices using Avida-ED.” Project 2061. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Washington DC.

• May 28-31, 2015: Jim Smith will present “Avida-ED: An artificial life platform for teaching evolutionary principles and the nature of science”, which has been accepted at the 22nd Annual ASM Conference for Undergraduate Educators to be held at the Renaissance Austin Hotel in Austin, TX.

• April 15, 2015: The Avida-ED Project is pleased to welcome our new software developer Diane Blackwood. Diane has an MS in biomedical engineering and a PhD in Wildlife and Fisheries Science and has done research on dolphin acoustics. Most recently, she developed software for the Fish & Wildlife Research Institute. Diane will be primarily working on a browser-based version of Avida-ED that will avoid the need to maintain cross-platform versions of the application.

• November 14, 2014: Robert T. Pennock gives an invited talk on “Digital Darwin: Evolution in Action in Your Computer” at the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference in Cleveland, OH.

• October 15, 2014: Postdoc position offered for Avida-ED project. Please download and pass along our position description. We will begin reviewing applications November 15. UPDATE: The position has been filled. Welcome Mike Wiser!

• September 7, 2014: Avida-ED curriculum article published in American Biology Teacher: Amy Lark, Gail Richmond, Robert T. Pennock. “Modeling Evolution in the Classroom: The Case of the Fukushima Butterflies” (2014, 76(7):450-454).

Abstract: New science standards and reform recommendations spanning grades K-16 focus on a limited set of key scientific concepts from each discipline that all students should know, but also emphasize the integration of these with science practices so that students learn not only the “what” of science but also the “how” and “why”. In line with this approach, we present an exercise that models the integration of fundamental evolutionary concepts with science practices. Students use Avida-ED digital evolution software to test claims from a study on mutated butterflies in the vicinity of the compromised Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex subsequent to the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 (Hiyama et al., Scientific Reports 2 Article 570, 2012). This exercise is appropriate for use in both high school and undergraduate biology classrooms [pdf]

• September 2014: The National Science Foundation has awarded the Avida-ED project a five year $2.3m grant to support Avida-ED software and curriculum development, assessment studies, and a series of national faculty development workshops. Robert T. Pennock is the Principle Investigator, with Richard Lenski, Louise Mead, Charles Ofria and James Smith as Co-Principle Investigators.

• August 2014: Robert T. Pennock is a co-PI of a new grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to reform STEM gateway courses at MSU. Part of this five-year $1.5m grant will fund a programmer and graduate student for the Avida-ED project.

• February 2014: New model exercises and instructor support materials on are now available on the Curriculum page, including “Exploring the Effects of Mutation Rate on Individuals” by Amy Lark, and “Exploring Selection and Fitness” by Amy Lark and Robert T. Pennock.

• January 2014. Golden version of Avida-ED 2.0 released. This is mostly an “under the hood” revision that provides a flexible and powerful foundation for future feature enhancements, but there are some changes that will provide immediate benefits. Major code optimizations make everything run faster with larger world sizes. The speed increase also allowed us to replace the previous pre-evolved ancestor organism with the standard simple replicator ancestor used in the research version of Avida. See Version History for full list of improvements and changes in Avida-ED 2.0.

•November 3, 2011. Robert T. Pennock gives a talk and demonstration of Avida-ED at iBEST Colloquium, University of Idaho.

• September 16, 2011: Robert T. Pennock gives a talk and demonstration of Avida-ED at Utah State University.

• September 2011. We have provided a temporary fix for the font display problem that occurs under Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and 10.7 (Lion). We are currently at work on a complete recoding of Avida-ED that will make it fully compatible and ready for the new features we have planned for the next major release, but in the meantime users running these systems should download Avida-ED 1.2.0.3011+.

• March 31-April 1, 2011: Robert T. Pennock gives a workshop demonstration of Avida-ED at University of Texas at Austin.

• March 24-25, 2011, Robert T. Pennock gives a workshop demonstration of Avida-ED at North Carolina A&T University.

• February 23, 2011, Charles Ofria gives a talk and and demonstration of Avida-ED at University of Washington.

• February 11, 2011, Robert T. Pennock gives an invited talk and demonstration of Avida-ED at The College of Charleston.

• Spring 2010: We have developed a BETA version of a new plug-in for Avida-ED that allows the user to create a “Multi-dish” with multiple sub-environments. University instructors who might be interested in helping with classroom beta-testing, please contact the Avida-ED Project <pennock5{at}msu.edu>.

• October 9, 2009: Robert T. Pennock gives an invited talk and demonstration of Avida-ED at University of Missouri, Biochemistry department colloquium.

• March 28, 2009: Robert T. Pennock gives an invited talk and demonstration of Avida-ED at AAAS Speak Out for Science teacher workshop. Tulsa, OK.

• November 2, 2007: Released a special Mac OS X version of Avida-ED that runs natively on Intel Macs. Now available in the Download area.

• October 19, 2007: Robert Pennock gives an invited talk and demonstration of Avida-ED at the National Science Teacher Association (NSTA) conference in Detroit, Michigan.

• July 7, 2007: Robert Pennock gives an invited talk about the design and development of Avida-ED at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) in London, England.

• June 19, 2007: After three years of development and classroom testing, Avida-ED was officially released for public distribution at the Society for the Study of Evolution meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Avida-ED is an award-winning educational application developed at Michigan State University for undergraduate biology courses to help students learn about evolution and scientific method by allowing them to design and perform experiments to test hypotheses about evolutionary mechanisms using evolving digital organisms.